Passy was one of a small group of works chosen to be reproduced in the seminal treatise Du "Cubisme", written by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger in 1912 and published by Eugène Figuière the same year.

Executed in a highly personal Cubist style with multiple viewpoints and planar faceting, this is one of a number of paintings from 1912-13 involving the theme of the bridge in an urban landscape.

In opposition to classical perspective as a mode of representation, Gleizes employed a new spatial model based in part on the pictorial space of the mathematician Henri Poincaré.

This painting, in the collection of the Museum Moderner Kunst (mumok),[1] Vienna, probably refers to the spirit of solidarity among the newly formed "Artists of Passy", during a time when factions had begun to develop within Cubism.

Passy (Bridges of Paris) is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 60.5 x 73.2 cm (23.8 by 28.8 inches), signed and dated Alb Gleizes, 1914, lower left.

Their first diner (Premier dîner des Artistes de Passy) presided over by Paul Fort was held at the house of Balzac, rue Raynouard, in the presence of Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marie Laurencin, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger, André Mare, Francis Picabia, Henry Valensi, and Jacques Villon.

Instead of depicting a bowl of fruit or a man playing a guitar under the influence of African art, Gleizes turns toward a non-Euclidean model of geometry as a source of inspiration for Passy.

This work signified the rejection of Euclidean geometry and its correlate; the quantitative measurement of spatial depth governing perspective invented during the Renaissance, an unquestioned principle of academic painting that had persisted to date.

There is no precisely clear relationship between structures (e.g., buildings, bridges) based on overlapping or on diminished scale with distance to show depth of field as objects recede from the foreground.

In an essay on the Cubism of Metzinger published September 1911, Gleizes wrote of his compatriot as a disciple of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who 'invents his own truth' by destroying 'old values'.

Now, according to the theoretical deliberations of Gleizes and Metzinger, artists were free to move around the subject matter, depicting multiple views 'simultaneously', whereby several successive moments in time could be captured and projected onto the canvas at once.

Hence results a certain indeterminateness in the very definition of space, and it is precisely this indeterminateness which constitutes its relativity.Memory would play an important role in Les Ponts de Paris (Passy), as it did in Gleizes' Le Chemin (Paysage à Meudon), Portrait of Jacques Nayral, painted in 1911, Man on a Balcony of 1912, and Portrait de l’éditeur Eugène Figuière, of 1913: Both the content and form in these paintings were the result of mind associations as he completed the works from memory; something that would play a crucial role in the works of other Cubists, such as Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay and Francis Picabia.

[4] Disparate inspirations during a proto-Cubist phase had already yielded several related methods of expressing the geometric experience (what Gleizes and Metzinger would soon attribute to mobile perspective).

Cubism was in the eye of the beholder; it could be seen as a process, a system, a state of mind, an inspired attitude that would develop a new symbolic structure, a reflection of the changing world.

Despite a growing awareness, a 'collective consciousness' based on a nonacademic passion for structure and mobility, and despite the sense of group unity that would attain a maxima circa 1912, deep-seated differences arose sporadically, often fueled by critics and dealers.

[11] To some extent Kahnweiler had succeeded in his endeavor, prompting historians such as Douglas Cooper to coin the term ‘true’ Cubism to describe the work of Picasso and Braque.

"Aimed at a large Salon public", writes art historian Christopher Green, "these works made clear use of Cubist techniques of faceting and multiple perspective for expressive effect in order to preserve the eloquence of subjects that were richly endowed with literary and philosophical connotations".

It was not the work of an isolated figure who presided over the mystery of a boutique, who surrounded himself with thick veils and acted on some sniffer dogs [flaireurs] and dupes, but rather the brutal appearance in broad daylight of a coherent group [ensemble homogène] who did not claim to be displaying masterpieces but wanted to witness a fervent discipline, a new order.